I-Team: Teens Turning To Flower Seeds To Get High
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NORTH TEXAS (CBS11 I-TEAM) - A warning for parents-- the I-Team is learning some teenagers are turning to flower seeds for a cheap but dangerous high.
Young people are posting videos all over YouTube about their experiences after eating flower seeds.
One boy holds a bag in front of the camera showing about 100 black seeds. "I took about this much." He calls his post a "trip report."
Another teen says, "It does make you hallucinate cause it has lysergic acid in it and it's a psychedelic"
Others post videos bragging about the effects. "It's definitely makes me laugh."
"You feel a body high really quick," says one teenager.
A school district in Massachusetts recently raised concerns nationwide warning parents that several children had been hospitalized after eating Sleepy grass, Hawaiian Baby Woodrose, and Morning Glory seeds--all to get high. Some nearby garden centers reacted by putting seeds behind store counters.
The I-Team wanted to see if that was happening here. We visited 10 North Texas stores and found the seeds all easily accessible and right out in the open.
One store clerk told us, "Nobody is putting seeds behind (the counter)."
Doctor Kristina Damaski is getting a fellowship in toxicology. The emergency room doctor does not believe the seeds should be regulated but she says, "The stores have to use some discretion as to who is buying these seeds."
She says in the last 10 years the North Texas Poison Center at Parkland has received 550-calls about young people---nine-to-21-years-old-- who swallowed seeds to get high.
WARNING SIGNS & SYMPTOMS:
Morning glory is similar to LSD and causes hallucinations.
Jimson weed is similar to Benadryl creating a rapid heart rate and agitation.
Yellow jasmine gets more serious. Dr. Damaski says, "They've presented very sedated and in some cases needed ventilator support."
And, the seed group including Foxglove and Oleander may be the scariest containing an ingredient to treat heart failure. "It will potentially be fatal," says Dr. Damaski.
CHANGES:
Experts in garden centers say they are starting to see changes on seed packaging.
Anthropologist Brian Allen reads the back of a package of Foxglove seeds. "It contains seeds not recommended for eating."
John Allen has worked at a Dallas garden store for 40 years. "There's more warnings like that to let people know."
But the I-team found no consistency with this in the seed packets we bought. Some had a warning. Others did not.
The seeds packages cost us about one- to three-dollars. We found about 50 seeds inside each package. Doctors say teens are taking anywhere from 100 to 300 seeds in hopes of getting high.
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